Is it really difficult to start a business on the Internet?
The most difficult thing about starting an Internet business is going from 0 to 1, which is much harder than going from 1 to 10 or from 10 to 100.
1. Having an idea is actually not even 0, because an idea is a very abstract thing. Everyone is creative and everyone can have a whim. In theory, there are some ideas that can be realized There are many, but there are only a few ideas that can really be implemented, and the ideas that are implemented need to meet the needs of the market. This demand must be a real and objective pain point demand rather than a false demand. The highest level of an idea is to create demand, which may not be the case for users. I know that I have this need, and when I come into contact with this need, I find that I crave this need.
2. Money. A good woman cannot make a meal without straw, and capital is always the biggest obstacle in the early stage of starting a business. Whether it is company registration, office location selection, equipment leasing or personnel recruitment, start-up capital is required. In the early stage, you need to spend the project survival period with the minimum cost to survive. Talk about development.
3.Talent. What startup companies lack the most is talent, and what they need most is talent. If you don’t have much money to hire big names, then you have to settle for a novice and slowly train them. It’s easy to hire people but hard to keep them. The biggest problem for startups is to retain them. People, once employees don’t see any hope of development, they will quit one after another, it’s useless even if you have three heads and six arms.
4. Emotional intelligence. Start-up companies do not have the factional struggles and intrigues of large companies, which further highlights the importance of entrepreneurs' emotional intelligence. No matter how strong your personal ability is, a person only has 2 hands and 2 feet after all, but a team is different. Even if your personal ability is not strong, the achievements achieved by working together as a team will definitely be much greater than that of an individual, but the premise is that you have emotional intelligence. Online, this is actually the easiest and most difficult hurdle to break through on the Internet. There are many examples of star startups failing due to infighting within the company. Even if you have the right time and place, without the right people and people, you will still fail.
Those rules and routines for starting a business from 0 to 1
1. Rules
The project growth curve is 0-1 (small steps and fast running), 1-n ( Making strides)
Let’s first take a look at the two stages that all entrepreneurial projects will go through, namely 0-1 and 1-n! All projects must be in the 0-1 stage at the beginning! This stage means there are a lot of uncertainties and the risks are high. All development plans are based on (the founder's) assumptions. Since they are assumptions, they need to be verified! Is the market positioned well? Is the product polished well? How to polish it? Where are the seed users? Are there enough seed users? Does it have a basic brand image and reputation? These (uncertainties) all indicate that your project is still at the 0-1 stage!
If you compare your project to your child, and your child is not yet a minor, maybe only 4-5 years old! During this time, I watched everyone’s exchanges in the community and found that there are many entrepreneurs, including many members in our community. Although their projects are still in the 0-1 stage, as founders, they use 1 day in and day out. -n way of thinking and communication to advance their projects!
It’s like a girl is obviously underage, but adults ask her to wear high heels and makeup like an adult. This approach is inappropriate! As we all know, a little girl should be kept curious, ask more questions, and make more small mistakes. This is also the way of thinking and communication we should have in the 0-1 stage of starting a business. The project is still in its infancy, so when we get to know the surrounding market and customers, we should think more and ask more questions.
We just said that the characteristic of 0-1 is that there are too many uncertainties, which also prevents us from and should not make long-term plans and invest a lot of manpower, material and financial resources. If you take a 0-1 stage project for financing, unless you are Lei Jun, it will be difficult to convince investors. The same is true for finding partners. It is also difficult to convince partners to join full-time when they are still uncertain.
So as a founder, your job is to use a correct way of thinking and communication to promote it in the 0-1 stage and reduce the uncertainty of the project.
Many people complain in the group that they can't find investors or partners. In fact, the fundamental reason is that your project still has so many questions. How can others invest in you? How can I join you? Therefore, if the project is still in the 0-1 stage, you should use the correct method to remove these uncertainties. If you use a 1-n communication method to tease investors and partners, of course you will not succeed!
The four-fold door of 2.0-1
As a founder, at the very beginning, you should take your project through this 0-1 stage as smoothly and quickly as possible. How to take your project through the 0-1 stage smoothly? It’s about removing the uncertainty in the project step by step!
I divide the uncertainty in the 0-1 stage into four layers, which I call the quadruple gate.
The first level: Verify the problem audience;
The second level: Verify the solution;
The third level: Accumulate seed users;
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The fourth door: Verify commercial realization.
Why is it a four-fold door? Because you can't bypass it. For example, you can't bypass the first level and go directly to the second level. For example, you cannot verify the solution before you have verified the audience for the problem. The problem has not been clarified, and the audience has not yet clarified it. If you sell a solution or have already started polishing the product, it will not work. , does it make sense logically? Another example is that it makes no sense to start polishing the product before you know whether people like it or whether they will accept your plan! ?
So you can see that the curve of the 0-1 stage is winding and winding. It emphasizes flexibility and one stage, and you must be sensitive enough to the amount of investment to control your time as much as possible. and financial resources, don’t waste them.
Weapons to break through the four doors:
1. Imaginary products (such as a paragraph and personal WeChat),
2. Low-tech products (such as a picture Poster QR code),
3. Minimum viable prototype (H5, mini program, App),
4. Products with revenue model (payment directly transferred from seed user WeChat group method)
Now that there are four doors, just like fighting monsters and upgrading in the game, we need special weapons to break through each door. In essence, we still follow the product-driven and user-driven route, so the weapons at every step are products, but the definition of product form here is very broad, just like choosing different weapons in different scenarios, including pistols, etc. There are also submachine guns!
In the stage of determining the problem audience, which is the first step, we have to use the lightest product form, which is an imaginary product. The form in which we present the product is a paragraph or an interview, but we must remember that no matter what form of product it is, there must be clearly defined user interactions. For example, after introducing your imaginary product in a paragraph, you must remember to ask the other person if they would like to add you on WeChat to continue following your project? The imaginary product also needs to be polished, so what you polish is just the description text, so the iteration cycle at this stage is very fast, and you can quickly collect feedback from others, which is more suitable for quick adjustments.
The second weapon is a low-tech product, such as a poster that allows people to visually see your product. The production cost of the product at this stage is definitely higher than that of the product in the conjecture stage, but it only requires design and does not require any product implementation, such as writing code. Why make a visual presentation like a poster? Because at this stage what you want to verify is whether the solution you proposed is emotionally accepted by everyone for the first time, and even arouses great curiosity.
Here is a real example. Two weeks ago, I participated in an entrepreneurship camp as a mentor at the Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts with students and teachers from eight major art academies. One of the teams I led produced such a low-tech product, a pre-sale poster. The poster was about a beauty product they imagined. Because the poster had a sense of design and was easy to spread among friends, it quickly received advance payments from many people.
Of course, in the end they got all their money back, but they were able to perfectly verify the acceptance of this imaginary product solution, and it only took them a weekend!
The third weapon is a minimum viable product prototype. Technical implementation will be used here, such as H5 web pages, mini programs, or apps. ?This process will be relatively long, and it will also require multiple product iterations in the middle. It may be to polish the functions, or it may be to polish the interface, UI, or it may be to polish the experience process, UX, but everyone must remember what needs to be overcome here. This important door is to accumulate seed users, or to accumulate a certain number of seed users. If you can verify that your product and service can acquire users, retain users, and form a certain degree of word-of-mouth communication, then congratulations, this important door has also been adopted by you. Breached.
The last weapon with income model product. If you are charging users directly, then this stage is to design a charging function or service and try to collect money from users. If your revenue model is advertising, then this stage is to introduce advertising into the product to verify whether users will buy it.
I still want to emphasize here that the flexibility and cost of each weapon are different, so the stages targeted are also different. For example, in the first stage when the target audience is still being verified, you should put all your energy into polishing your imaginary product and conduct more customer interviews. This is far more flexible than investing in making a real product. What? Don't be too pretentious about what kind of weapons to use for such levels, which will cause waste and passivity in project advancement.
3. Five-step decomposition of unit iteration
After talking about the levels and weapons, the next step is to talk about how to fight, which is the tactical cultivation of us entrepreneurs. The tactical cultivation at the 0-1 stage is completely different from that at the 1-n stage. The tactical training of 0-1 is to run quickly in small steps and iterate flexibly. When 1-n, you can make long-term plans, focus on investing human, material and financial resources, and make great progress. ?
Running in small steps means that the cycle of each iteration should not be too long. Generally 1-4 weeks, and each iteration can be broken down into 5 steps.
The first step is to define the product. Defining the product means defining the function, design and positioning of the product based on the assumptions to be verified in the current iteration.
The second step is to design and implement the product. This step is the specific design, as well as necessary programming or other technical implementation.
The third step is to formulate test goals. ?The target here refers to the test target. For example, a certain iteration is to verify whether users will pay for a premium feature. Then our test goal can be that if more than 70 people pay, it means that the hypothesis is established.
The fourth step is to perform testing, which is to hand your product to the user, or you can take your product to interview customers on the spot. Here you need to set a long test time. It usually takes a few days to 3-4 weeks, and data and feedback must be recorded during the process.
The fifth step is data comparison target. This is the most essential step in every iteration. Only by comparing real data with our assumed goals can we know whether our assumptions are true and determine the direction of the next project advancement.
To summarize a little, I just talked about the two different stages of 0-1 and 1-n in the project growth curve, the four-fold door of 0-1, and the different weapons needed to break through these four-fold doors. , that is, products of different forms. Finally, we talk about the 0-1 tactical cultivation, which means running fast in small steps and iterating flexibly. These are the so-called rules and regulations. The constitution is to look at the development of the project and the allocation of human, material and financial resources from a global perspective. After that chapter, we will share some routines. There are some practical techniques and a few shortcuts that may have immediate results.
4. Routine 1: Golden 60s
What does golden 60s mean? That is, you have 60 seconds to explain your project and your concept to others. The Golden 60s is not necessarily a formal speech on stage, but an opportunity that may appear at any time in life to sell your entrepreneurial ideas.
The other party may be your friend, or someone who plays a decisive role in a certain field, or it may be your potential partner, or your future investor. Remember that such opportunities may appear at any time, if you can do it Always state your entrepreneurial project clearly and you will get more opportunities than others.
The purpose of the 60s is to arouse the other party's interest in continuing to understand (the project) so as to obtain the opportunity for in-depth communication. Opportunities are always reserved for those who are prepared. Entrepreneurs must practice hard and cultivate their golden 60s to prepare for emergencies.
Three important principles of the golden 60s
1. The time should not exceed 60s
That is, everything you want to say must be explained clearly within 60s. Why is it 60s? ? Because physiologically speaking, the sustained attention a person can give to a new thing that he or she does not understand at all is only 60 seconds. If you cannot explain your project or content clearly and arouse the other party's interest within 60 seconds, then even If he continues to listen to you, his attention will drop significantly, or he will simply find an excuse to end the conversation, so 60 is the longest time you can have. If you can successfully arouse the other party's interest within 60 seconds, congratulations. , your first step has been successful!
2. The amount of information should not exceed 300 words
Some people will say that if it takes 60 seconds, I speak very fast. I have seen many road shows of entrepreneurial projects, and it takes 60 seconds for him to speak. The speed is very fast, which is not possible because the amount of information is too large. The amount of information should not exceed 300 words, because the other party’s digestion ability is also limited, and there is too much information that he cannot digest.
3. Choose different versions according to the different highlights of your project
This version has been prepared by you before, and you can prepare multiple versions to deal with different roles of the other party.
*Golden 60S template
Examples
After the two examples, let’s review the purpose of Golden 60s? Why do we spend energy designing a 60-second speech? Do we want others to buy our product immediately after listening to it? Or invest with us now? Obviously not! This 60s period is just a stepping stone. Our purpose is not to make the other party make an immediate purchase or investment decision. Our purpose is to arouse the other party's interest in continuing to learn more. It is best to ask some constructive questions!
5. Routine - Customer Interview
So after a successful golden 60s, if the other party is willing to continue communicating, congratulations, you have successfully attracted his attention. It’s time for customer interviews. The purpose of customer interviews in the 0-1 stage is to obtain real clues to verify various assumptions on product conception, so we should ask questions as much as possible during customer interviews. But how to ask? What questions to ask?
First of all, clarify the purpose of the question. The purpose of the interview is to obtain real clues, not to deliberately get closer to your own assumptions. You should not deliberately lead the other party to say what you originally imagined. This is meaningless. of.
There is a key point here. Avoid asking the other party's choice directly. For example, questions like this are asking about choices: Do you think my xxx is good? Will you buy it? These were their thoughts at the time, which were the choices they made based on their judgment at the time. These options are ad hoc and unreliable. And it may be that because they are acquaintances, their answers will tend to cater to you out of face or favor, so these answers are of no value to you.
Page 11: So what kind of questions should be asked? The questions we ask should allow us to get real clues. Such questions are good questions. How was your recent xxx experience? Since you're asking someone about something that happened in the past, unless he lied to you, how much would you pay for such a service? This is a quantifiable question, and our questions should ask about facts and data, not about their choices and thoughts.
Let’s look at the example of Airbnb again
Okay, we just talked about the rules and routines. The routine talked about the golden 60S, and the other one is how to conduct customer interviews, so now let’s continue Next, let’s talk about how to switch to the perspective of your potential partners and investors.
Have you ever thought about it? Why are they not ready to invest in you and join you now? When will they be willing to invest in you and join you? In fact, what I have always imagined is that when you are working on a project, on the one hand you will grow in two dimensions, and one dimension is very Directly, it means that your customer volume and sales volume, that is, your entire business is growing. Another dimension is that your "project circle of friends" followers are also growing. Your partners and investors all emerge from this group of people. I have been following your project and will join you at the right time.
Then why didn’t these people join you in the first place? In fact, the reason is very simple, that is, you have too many uncertain factors and the risks are too high. Everyone's tolerance for risk is different. If you are a founder, you bear the greatest risk, and you have started from the beginning. But there’s no reason why you should expect all your investors and partners to be the same as you, so everyone’s risk benchmark is different.
Followers: The 0-1 process we talked about will not only allow the founder to accumulate seed users, but also build a "circle of friends" of followers for the project! The founder's responsibility is to remove risks. When the risks are reduced to a certain range, partners and investors will naturally emerge from the followers and join.
Remove risks: So as a founder, you should have a strong awareness of the existence of risks and be able to quantify them, just like you have a big wall in the office, and you put all possibilities List all the risks. Whether the next 0-1 stage is a few weeks, a few months or a year, two or three years, as long as you are in the 0-1 stage, your responsibility is to remove all these risks. And promptly update your followers on the risk reduction situation, letting them know that this matter is becoming more and more certain, and they can join you and vote for you when the time is right.
Here is another picture. This picture is upside down. You can see that the risk is decreasing as the project progresses. The order of risk reduction is also the same. It is still the four-fold door. First The risk we exclude is that the audience is wrong. If we target the right audience, we exclude the solution that we don’t like. Then our product is not good enough and we cannot accumulate enough seed users. Finally, the business model is not impressive enough and others are unwilling to pay.
The whole process just mentioned is also a process of risk reduction. How do we choose the risks that should be removed? How to prioritize this? We have listed all the risks of the project on a wall at home. How do we know which risk should be eliminated most? How to target the most critical risks? This also determines what our next step will be.
Here we give you a simple tool. After we list all the risks, we have two dimensions. The horizontal axis is from certainty to uncertainty. Risks are definitely uncertain. One Certain things are not risks. The vertical axis ranges from relevant to irrelevant. The risks we want to solve must be related to the project. If it is not related to the project, we do not need to spend time, so when we design the next iteration , we will find the most relevant and uncertain risks on the graph and remove them first.
Let’s take Airbnb as an example, and it’s still such a horizontal axis and vertical axis chart. From relevant to irrelevant, from certain to uncertain, if the founder of Airbnb had such a risk hypothesis at that time:
1. What is a relevant but identified risk: Most people traveling to foreign places We need a place to rest at night. We don’t need to verify this, although it is related to our business.
2. Uncertain but not relevant: Whether people living in the same city also need to temporarily live in strangers’ homes is possible. We are not sure, but it was related to Airbnb’s business at the time. It is irrelevant because they focus on people who travel to other places and do not pay attention to people in the same city. People in the same city may have such a need to change accommodation, but it is not relevant to them. Although it is not sure, since it is not There is no need to verify if relevant.
3. Uncertain but related risks: It is indeed uncertain whether most people who travel to foreign places will mind communicating in depth with unfamiliar locals. We don’t know how many people travel to foreign places. If you are willing to communicate with unfamiliar locals, this is also relevant.
4. Unsure but very relevant: How many people who travel to foreign places choose to stay overnight in unfamiliar local homes, for example, sleeping on their sofas. Before Airbnb appeared, there was another website called couchsurfing. It’s about sleeping on the sofa. How many people have used their service? This platform finds some strangers and local people’s homes to be sofa guests. This is uncertain, that is, they don’t know, but it is very related to their business. Hypothesis, if this hypothesis is true then it proves that the demand is very strong.